Lukas Foss Biography Quotes 30 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Lukas Foss was born on August 15, 1922, in Berlin, and spent his childhood in a cultured, intellectually engaged household. With the rise of Nazism, his family left Germany in 1933 and settled in Paris, where his musical gifts quickly drew notice. In Paris he studied piano with Lazare Levy and composition and theory with Noel Gallon, grounding himself in the rigorous craft and clarity of French training. When the family emigrated to the United States in 1937, he anglicized the family name from Fuchs to Foss and continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where his mentors included the pianist Isabelle Vengerova, the composer Rosario Scalero, and the conductor Fritz Reiner. Summers at Tanglewood brought him into close contact with Serge Koussevitzky, whose mentorship as a conductor and champion of new music would shape Foss's outlook. He also studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale, adding contrapuntal mastery and structural discipline to his toolbox. By the early 1940s he had found a new home in America and began to forge a career as a pianist, composer, and conductor.

Emergence as Composer, Pianist, and Conductor
Foss's earliest works revealed an assured command of neoclassical style, reflecting the influence of Hindemith's craft and Stravinskian clarity while already hinting at a personal wit and rhythmic buoyancy. Parallel to his growth as a composer, he emerged as a formidable pianist with a crystalline touch and an instinct for contemporary repertoire. In these years he formed enduring ties with Leonard Bernstein, a friendship rooted in shared training and mutual advocacy. Bernstein and Koussevitzky conducted his scores, and Foss returned the favor by performing and promoting their music, reinforcing an American network of artistic support that became central to mid-century musical life.

Teacher and Innovator
In 1953 Foss joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, where his curiosity and openness made him a galvanizing figure for young musicians. There he founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, an adventurous group that worked with chance procedures, graphic notation, and collective invention. The ensemble was a laboratory in which Foss explored the boundary between composition and improvisation, a stance that would inform his scores of the late 1950s and 1960s. He embraced pluralism before it became a buzzword, setting Bach alongside new sounds, and placing spontaneity beside meticulous craft.

Buffalo and the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts
Foss's appointment as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic in the 1960s marked a decisive expansion of his influence. In Buffalo he co-founded, with administrator and composer Allen Sapp and with philanthropic support, the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at the University at Buffalo. The Center's Creative Associates brought composers, performers, and audiences together in residencies, workshops, and concerts, making Buffalo a hotbed for new music. Foss conducted premieres, nurtured experimental projects, and championed American mavericks alongside leading European modernists, projecting an international scope from a regional base.

Brooklyn, Milwaukee, and Jerusalem
After Buffalo, Foss became closely identified with the Brooklyn Philharmonia (later Brooklyn Philharmonic), where his long leadership turned the orchestra into a beacon for adventurous programming. He assembled thematic seasons, juxtaposed classics and contemporary works, and invited wide-ranging collaborators to challenge audiences and players alike. He also served as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony, broadening its repertoire and reach, and held a prominent post with the Jerusalem Symphony, extending his advocacy of contemporary music to new communities. Everywhere he worked, Foss pushed orchestras to engage with living composers and to hear the past through the lens of the present.

Compositional Voice and Key Works
Foss's language evolved continually. The neoclassical poise of his early pieces gave way to an exploratory period that prized spontaneity, collage, and controlled indeterminacy. Time Cycle (1960), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, was premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic with soprano Adele Addison and became an emblem of his poetic, restless imagination. Chamber works such as Echoi and orchestral essays like Baroque Variations and Phorion deconstructed and reframed materials from the musical canon, subjecting them to distortion, repetition, and illumination as if viewed through shifting prisms. In later decades he moved toward a renewed lyricism and a more openly tonal surface without relinquishing the probing intelligence that defined his voice. Pieces such as the Renaissance Concerto for flute and the often-performed Three American Pieces (originally for violin and piano, later orchestrated) illustrate his capacity to be both accessible and exacting.

Collaborations, Friendships, and Family
People were at the center of Foss's musical life. Mentors such as Serge Koussevitzky, Paul Hindemith, Isabelle Vengerova, Rosario Scalero, and Fritz Reiner left deep marks on his musicianship. His long friendship with Leonard Bernstein yielded performances, commissions, and a model of public engagement. In Buffalo he worked closely with Allen Sapp to create institutional structures that sustained new music, and he cultivated strong ties with performers who thrived in his flexible, exploratory aesthetic. In 1951 he married the painter Cornelia Brendel Foss, a significant presence in his life and community. Their marriage, which endured through separations and reconciliation, intersected notably with the pianist Glenn Gould, with whom Cornelia had a relationship in the late 1960s before returning to her family. Through these relationships, Foss navigated the pressures of a high-profile artistic life and affirmed his belief in artistic collaboration as a way of living.

Teacher, Mentor, and Advocate
Beyond UCLA, Foss taught and led ensembles at institutions including the University at Buffalo and, later, Boston University, where he continued to mentor composers and performers. He encouraged students to master technique yet remain fearless about risk, to hear tradition as a starting point rather than a cage. His rehearsals combined exacting standards with curiosity, and his example as a pianist-conductor-composer offered a model of artistic versatility.

Late Years and Legacy
Foss remained active as a composer and conductor into his later years, accepting commissions, revisiting earlier works, and continuing to appear with orchestras that valued his exploratory spirit. He died in New York City on February 1, 2009. By then he had left a rare legacy: a body of music that moves with agility between historical homage and modern experiment, and a public record as conductor, pianist, and educator that strengthened the ecosystem for contemporary music. The people around him, from Koussevitzky and Hindemith to Bernstein, Allen Sapp, and Cornelia Foss, were not simply acquaintances but partners in a restless, generous project: to make the concert hall a place where invention, memory, and performance meet.

Our collection contains 30 quotes who is written by Lukas, under the main topics: Truth - Art - Music - Love - Writing.

Other people realated to Lukas: Barbara Kolb (Composer)